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One of the frustrating things about the debt ceiling debate has
been dealing with the competing narratives spun by those
supporting the various positions. It isn't that these
narratives are necessarily wrong, but that the people offering
them present them with the confidence of someone describing
settled history, rather than one possible way (and often far from
the most likely way) that events could play out.

A lot of conservatives describe a potential shutdown or default
as if it were ripped straight from the pages of Atlas Shrugged.
Their explanation of why we need to precipitate a crisis is that
it's going to happen eventually, and so better now than
later.

The logic of this is dubious--we're all going to die eventually,
but that doesn't mean I'm eager to hasten the day. As Dave Ramsey
says, you don't declare bankruptcy until the bailiffs are at the
door: as long as you haven't defaulted, you preserve the
important option not to default.

But leave that aside. The problem is really with the larger
narrative, in which there is no option but to slash spending, and
readjust to a newer, much smaller government. But of
course, we will not have a friendly author writing the script
here. The villians do not have to meekly submit to the
comeuppance delivered by our steely-willed heroes. When the
government shuts down, the voters will not immediately turn to
figuring out how to make a living without their social security
and disability checks. They will mob their representatives.
In the face of this, the steely will of the GOP freshman may turn
out to be artfully folded tinfoil. Or the beseiged old
guard may cross the floor to cut a deal with Democrats. At
last resort, the voters will remove the guys who took away their
goodies with no notice. Once the tea party has had their
ass handed to them at the polls, borrowing and spending resume,
albeit at a higher price. But since the Democrats will be
firmly in charge, there's a good chance that higher price is paid
with tax cuts, not less spending.

The problem with the narrative is that it simply writes the
people on the other side out as independent actors. They're
characters in a drama--a drama that we know the hero wins,
because after all, he's the hero. So it only remains to
figure out exactly how we get the hero to victory. If you
assume that there must be some way for the hero to win and slash
spending to 1920 levels, then of course, I'm just an
obstructionist sellout. But if you acknowledge the
possibility that this might not actually be possible in a
representative democracy filled with motivated voters who are
more numerous than the Neo-Coolidge faction, then a whole
universe of caveats opens up.

Even if you don't think these events are the most likely outcome,
you have to acknowledge that there's a significant risk.
But when I pointed out this risk, I wasn't met with
compelling counterarguments. I was met with handwaving so
fast that it began to mimic the sound of crickets. Or a
reiteration that the current path is unsustainable, and what was
my plan for fixing it?

This doesn't actually rebut the point: your plan can fail
spectacularly even if my plan is no better than the current
status quo. I happen to think that my plan--a decade long
series of negotiations which will end up with higher taxes and
lower spending, and hopefully a welfare state reconfigured to
focus on the truly needy--is better than the status quo.
But it seems much better than pointlessly shooting up the
joint before you get thrown out.

Now, because this a Megan McArdle post, I must point out that the
tea partiers are not the only ones getting swept away by the
power of their narratives. The left are not, of course, taking
their cues from Atlas Shrugged. Instead they appear to
think that we are in a particularly gripping season finale of the
West Wing, where steely counterbrinksmanship forces moderate
Republicans in the House to join with the Democrats to enact a
bill more to their liking.

Note the similarity in the base narrative to the Tea Party story:
catastrophe has already happened (confidence in the US political
system/our fiscal balance has already been destroyed), and the
only thing that can avert total disaster is the courage to stand
strong in the face of our nation's enemies. They're not
risking our credit rating by throwing a tantrum rather than
accept that they can't have what they want; they're saving the
country from something even worse. We'll thank them
later.

And what happens if they're wrong, and the GOP is maybe a little
mad that Democrats left them hanging out to dry? What if they
don't cross the floor to make a deal on terms more favorable to
the Democrats, but decide that as long as they're going down, the
jerks who sold them out might as well go down with them? Or
what if they decide the same thing that Krugman and Judis are
trying to convince the Democrats of: that it would be better to
shut the government down than sign a deal that utterly violates
their beliefs about what's right for the country? In other
words, what if the GOP old guard start acting like the freshmen
and the progressive Democrats?

Crickets again. That's not in the script. In the
script, Martin Sheen gives a stirring speech, and shamed GOP
freshmen join Benedictine monastaries in order to hide from an
outraged public.

Maybe you find these narratives more plausible than I do--but no
one who has been reading something besides his own side's press
releases could possibly think that they were certain. And
the risks are huge--far greater than the potential gains.

This isn't a novel. It's messy, unpleasant reality.
But the activists on both sides do not seem to be living in
the same world that I am.